Since November last year, it has been reporting monthly cash profits, reversing the trend that had led to a huge cash loss of Rs 90 crore for the period April 1998 to October. For the four months from November 1998, it has reported a total cash profit of Rs 76 crore.

The giant Coal India Ltd subsidiary, which has emerged from the sickbed of the Board for Industrial & Financial Reconstruction once, had a total loss of Rs 533 crore as on March 31, 1998. Though ECL is still sliding towards the BIFR, the cash turnaround has forced the management to think of asking for an interest waiver.

The net cash loss for April 1997 to February 1998 was Rs 51.31 crore. "If the trend of the last four months continues, the company will record a small cash profit in 1998-99,wiping out the marginal loss," ECL officers said.

Two factors have helped ECL, which has some of the best coal reserves in the country. First, productivity has increased ever since the ECL board announced last October that it planned to shut down 64 mines and retrench 71,000 workers. Then, in December, the government notified a coal price increase for various grades, which works out to an average of 9.28 per cent.

ECL's net loss on coal has declined to Rs 457 crore in the eleven months to February 1999 from Rs 513 crore in the corresponding period of 1997-98. The sale value of raw coal has increased in the same period from Rs 1,731 crore to Rs 1,860 crore.

Around 10,000 employees have either retired or sought voluntary retirement during April 1998 to February 1999. Although this hiked the total gratuity payment to Rs 65 crore during this period from Rs 35 crore earlier, ECL's manpower has gone down to 1,44,000. Last month, ECL declared 150 engineers as surplus.

According to provisional figures,earning per manshift has increased in April-February 1998-99 to Rs 377 from Rs 335 last year.

Total production in the first eleven months was 23.9 million tonnes, nearly the same as that of the corresponding 11 months of 1997-98.

The president of the Coal India Officers Association's ECL unit, Tapan Majumdar, when contacted, told The Financial Express that production could have crossed the annual target of 29 million tonnes by now. "But we had to cut down on production following instructions from Coal India," he said.

The sources said ECL is likely to end the current year with a production of 27 million tonnes.

Insight

Top officials of CIL and ECL were scheduled to meet coal minister Dilip Ray in New Delhi on Monday to discuss a revival strategy. It is understood that some members of Parliament including the CPI(M)'s Basudeb Acharya were also present at the meeting, which was to be attended by CIL chairman PK Sengupta, ECL chairman RC Goyal, CIL technical director NK Sharma and hiscounterpart at ECL, HK Jha.

With ECL's net worth likely to be wiped out at the year-end, proposals for reviving or opting for a sick status were on the agenda.